Sonny Terry

Blues singer and harmonica player, born in Greensboro, Georgia, USA. He learned harmonica as a child and began earning a living in the streets at a young age. In 1938 he performed at the ‘From Spirituals to Swing’ concert at Carnegie Hall, displaying a unique virtuosity that involved bending and modulating notes. From the 1940s into the 1980s he performed widely with guitarist Brownie McGhee, but also cut many solo albums.

Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry (October 24, 1911-March 11, 1986), was a blues musician.

His father, a farmer, taught him to play basic blues harp as a youth. When Fuller died, he established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and the pair recorded numerous tracks together.

In 1938 Sonny Terry was invited to play at Carnegie Hall for the first From Spirituals To Swing concert and later that year he recorded for the Library of Congress. In 1940 Sonny Terry recorded his first commercial sides.

Despite their fame as "pure" folk artists, in the 1940s, Sonny and Brownie fronted a jump band combo with honking saxophone that was variously called Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers or Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five.

Terry was also in the 1947 original cast of the Broadway musical comedy Finian's Rainbow.

The Beck song 'One Foot in the Grave' off his album 'Stereopathetic Soulmanure' is apparently inspired by Sonny Terry.